


And the Darkness Hummed...

by PettyMermaidsGf



Category: The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Amused Damon Salvatore, Blood and Violence, F/F, F/M, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Heavy Angst, Ripper Stefan Salvatore, Stefan WAS going to use Bonnie to open up Katherine's tomb, Witch Bonnie Bennett, but then Bonnie was just so GOOD and LOVELY and ew wait wtf are all these feelings Stefan's having?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-07
Updated: 2020-01-07
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:01:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22155949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PettyMermaidsGf/pseuds/PettyMermaidsGf
Summary: Stefan has evil murder plans for the local Bennett witch powerful enough to open Katherine's tomb. Damon says it won't be easy and it'll probably take fucking forever to earn her trust with a little fake dating, but whatever - anything to get Damon to have hope again and stop being this sorry husk of a person, right? Too bad Bonnie goes and ruins everything by actually making Stefan care about her.
Relationships: Bonnie Bennett/Stefan Salvatore, Damon Salvatore & Stefan Salvatore, background Caroline Forbes/Meredith Sulez
Comments: 3
Kudos: 59





	And the Darkness Hummed...

**Author's Note:**

> This fic brought to you by my obsession with moody, dark Hozier songs (As It Was, I'm looking atchu) and my eternal anger and disdain with how Bonnie Sheila Bennett was treated.
> 
> This one's for Meen because I completely dropped the ball on my last Stefonnie drabble series and never brought Ripper Stefan out to play. I hope this makes up for the long absence! (Apologies in advance for the tense being everywhere)
> 
> Longer italic phrases = ripper Stefan's thoughts
> 
> Warning's there for graphic descriptions of violence, blood, and all the creepy, stalker, murder-y shit Stefan probs would've done more of had this show been on HBO and not the CW.

* * *

Liking the witch was never part of the plan. He’d reminded himself time and time again that he didn’t need to like the Bennett witch, the doppelgänger straight from his worst nightmares or the bright-eyed Hispanic girl and her over-enthusiastic, control freak of a blonde girlfriend they hung out with.

He just had to get close to her. Close enough that he could convince her, charm her, worm his way into her head and stay there for a spell as the rogue Italian transfer student with a “dark past” - dead parents, dead girlfriend, dead brother, and he’s _…still dealing with it,_ he’d say with a miserable, self-depreciating laugh _-_ and woo her that way. And she’d fall for it like all the rest, because that’s what Stefan does: he molds himself into the sort of person someone so desperately wants him to be, earns their trust with the crafted, curated persona of their dreams, and then slowly, deliberately, pulls away the mask and smiles as they scream.

Their blood always tastes _so much better_ after that first scream.

Damon's quick to point out that of course he didn’t have to make things romantic, but where was the fun in that?

Damon's quick to point out a lot of things on the flight back home from Amsterdam, actually. Like how it won’t be easy, like how it'll take time, like how he’ll probably have to fake laugh at her jokes and pretend to care about her friends and get a grip on his humanity. He’s forgotten about that - he’ll have to pretend to really be one of them again and shudders at the thought. Mortals and their petty, stupid feelings and hopes, worries, dreams… _ugh_.

Then Damon launchs into a monologue about getting Katherine back and true love and how he’d burn down the entire world to see her smile at him again and Stefan has to order a drink before he throws up all over the seat tray in front of him.

True love - now _that's_ a good laugh. Katherine doesn’t love anyone but herself, and Damon's so deluded by his own feelings that he can’t see that.

Maybe he does it on purpose. Stefan doesn’t like thinking about the possibility.

* * *

It takes weeks to find her at Whitmore and weeks more to learn about her without being too obvious or stalker-ish. Stefan grows so impatient with the whole Edward Cullen routine (reel her in, romance her some just to push her away again) that one night he's tempted to drag her from her dorm room kicking and screaming, drive her back to Mystic Falls and force her to open the damn tomb already. She’d probably fight him tooth and nail the whole way and _he’d_ _laugh as she begged him not to kill her._

_Her tears would taste almost as good as her blood and he knows it down to the marrow in him._

Fuck patience. Fuck love. He just wants Katherine back so his older brother will stop moping and angsting and torturing himself with their sire’s memory. Over the centuries, Damon had built her up to be this impossible, immovable force of a woman who was as ruthless as she relentless. When in reality, Katherine was neither: she was a spoiled rich girl who thought she deserved everything and took it like it was her God-given, blood-soaked right. She put on whatever persona was necessary to disarm and charm you, and then she murdered you. She was a coward who couldn’t choose between Stefan and Damon and then damned them both to eternal misery _just because she could._

Then she’d died in that church fire the townspeople started. And she’d taken the best parts of Damon with her. That’s why Stefan’s in this. Not to save Katherine or even get his centuries-long revenge that starts and ends with _setting her heart on fire and dancing on the ashes like the Devil his father thought he’d become_ , but because he needs his brother back. He needs Damon to be able to _hope_ again.

But Stefan seems to forget all that at the Halloween masquerade that night. 

He thinks it starts somewhere between the fever-pangs of hunger and the rich smell of Bonnie’s perfume layered over the warm, honey-thick sound of her laugh curling in the air between them as they dance slow and close. Add too many glasses of cherry wine to the mix and the exquisite cut of her dress and the lingering feeling of her eyes and hands and chest on his own (burning, it burns) and he can think of nothing more than dragging her away into the dark and the fog and romancing the hell out of her, good and proper, until her lips are kissed red and raw and swollen.

Yes, he reckons later that it starts there and the night only drags him deeper into full-on fever-dream madness when she finally sees him without the bright mask of humanity and the rich, curated charm; he lets her see the monster beneath, all dead eyes and desiccated veins and a cruel, empty smile on his face and _watches_ _as_ _Bonnie_ _actually steps forward rather than away._

She steps close enough to kiss and drags a finger along the line of his lips to feel the press of fangs beneath them and his gums burn at the touch, _magic and searing and almost decadently sweet as it is painful,_ before she remembers herself, flinches, and runs as far away into the surrounding woods as her feet will carry her. It isn’t far at all, and he makes himself sick with worry when she doesn't (or _won't_ ) answer her phone for some three days after that. _Imagine, him sick with worry over a witch._

And he stays up long into the night wondering and worrying about all the other terrible things she'd seen in the night to stand in front of him, in front of a murderous monster with no regret or remorse, with shaking knees and a defiant smile and declare that she wasn't afraid of him. And the little witch damn well should be.

But somewhere along the line, Bonnie stops being just a witch. She stops being a warm body for a spell, stops being a means to a bloody, violent end, and starts becoming something like a friend. As the seasons change and the nights grow cold and dark and the moon hangs sharp and crisp in the winter sky, Bonnie becomes less like the wild beat of a rabbit’s heart and the soft gaze of a wandering doe and more like someone he could care for, more like someone he could trust with the deepest, darkest, hollowest parts of him.

It thrills him just as much as it excites him when the whole thing should make him _absolutely sick_ _with disgust._

Damon laughs and laughs and _laughs_ about the irony of it all in their shared apartment that night when he catches Stefan smiling mid-sentence on the phone with Bonnie. He’s watched the two grow closer as October's deepened into November and the falling leaves have given way to slush and snow and the still, stark quiet of winter on a collision path that could only lead to this - this like, this longing, this _cursed_ _yearning_ \- and he’d done absolutely nothing to stop it.

The evil bastard, he’d probably known this would happen.

He’d interfered before when Stefan’s fake play-dates got a little too close, got a little too curious and stuck their nose into places they didn’t belong. So why hasn’t he done the same with Bonnie?

Has Damon seen the change in him over the months the same way his classmates must have? Has he seen the way it’s become easier to smile and listen to her as she rambles on about classes or bitches about miserably failed spells or waxes poetic about Meredith and Caroline and Matt and Elena? Or maybe Damon’s seen the way it’s become second-nature to order her drink along with his own every morning at the library cafe, a large sweet tea with extra lemon and a tall black coffee, bitter and strong, with enough caffeine to wake even the most sleep-deprived of sophomores. (At this point he thinks the cashier’s scared of him and always has both orders ready with a donut on the house for him and his girlfriend. He’d stopped bothering to correct the poor sod a month in and tips 40% when the guy doesn’t royally fuck up Bonnie’s tea.)

Or maybe Damon’s seen it in the way Stefan’s started holding the car door open for her with an obnoxious flourish like a carriage driver escorting an untouchable royal to the ball, or rolling his eyes at her absolutely shit puns, or Heaven and Hell above, actually braving a Star Wars flick with her when the series should’ve died out _long before_ the dawn of the new millennium.

Something like hunger twists Stefan’s stomach and he realizes with a sick, sour sense of dread that it’s far worse than that: it’s _feeling._

And he wasn’t supposed to feel a damned thing for Bonnie Elizabeth Bennett. But he does and it terrifies the ever-loving hell out of him.

**Author's Note:**

> The fic title's from Hozier's "In the Woods Somewhere", though I listened to As It Was some twelve thousand times writing this.
> 
> I regret nothing and I'm not sorry ;)
> 
> Health issues may or may not interfere with more fic updates, so enjoy this wee descent into Stefan's madness and his growing horror at re-discovering human emotions.


End file.
